Monthly Archives: March 2018

New You Tube Video: Our office…SO much more than where we work

We are more than excited to debut our You Tube page!

ILT Vignocchi is going to utilize drone technology to share gorgeous, educational and sometimes just fun videos so you can get to know us better.  So subscribe now!  You don’t want to miss out.

Our first video introduces you to our main office, sister nursery Montale Gardens as well as our production facility.

Enjoy!!

ILT Insider: Stink Bugs

Our Core Values:  Quality  Honesty  Pride  Teamwork  Cleanliness  Safety  
I recently came across an article in The New Yorker titled “Home Invaders” about the history and increase of stinkbugs in homes. You know, those lazy, ugly bugs that look like little brownish gray shields. Since I am in the landscape industry I have a pretty good working knowledge of insects, skeptical this would enlighten me even more, I delved in.
Boy was I wrong, it was fascinating! If you are like me anyway and think bugs are fascinating…
The brown marmorated stinkbug (halyomorpha halys) was brought over from, most likely, East Asia, China, Taiwan, Japan or South Korea. The first sighting of the insect in the United States was on September 21, 1998 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. From that first discovery the insect population has grown in insurmountable numbers. This is not a good situation because the stinkbug does not have one food source it damages, like the emerald ash borer, but many. Sweet corn, soybeans, tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, peaches, to name just a few. The article states “In orchards, they were crawling by the hundreds on every tree; so many had invaded corn and soybean fields that farmers had to turn on the windshield wipers in their combines while harvesting. Afterward, it wasn’t uncommon to find stinkbug damage on every single ear of corn.”
Insecticides do very little to rid these bugs due to their shape, the way they feed and the way their legs hold them above the top of a leaf (which prevents contact with the insecticide). Those characteristics that make insecticides non-effective in farm fields are what make spraying them in your home ineffective as well.
So, calling “The Orkin man” might prove costly and do nothing to rid your home of these pests. And a quick note, don’t squish or squash these guys as means of elimination, they got that name for a reason.
My question? “So why do so many show up in my house?” Well, that is the same reason there are thousands of them in farm fields. When the stinkbugs find food, or a place to overwinter in your attic, they release a pheromone that summons their friends. That pheromone can last for a year which can attract further generations into your home.
Is there good news? Yes, in summer the insects leave your home to reproduce and eat and in winter they enter, unfortunately in your home, a state called “diapause-a kind of insect hibernation.” This makes them extremely easy to catch in a cup and release back outside when they are hanging off your drapes or your walls.
The article is completely worth the read, if you have time on a Saturday morning while enjoying a cup of coffee. At least that is what I did.
Aaron Zych, RLA
Certified Arborist

ILT Insider: Changing the conversation on pruning

Our Core Values
Quality  Honesty  Pride  Teamwork  Cleanliness  Safety
TO SHEAR OR NOT TO SHEAR…
With spring right around the corner, those of us in the environmental services industry are happily ready to leave winter in the rear-view mirror and prepare for the new growing season. Over the next couple of months, here in the Midwest, deciduous trees and shrubs will come back to life and flush out their first new growth of the season. Typically, that is when most property managers and building owners expect to see their contractors break out the power shears and go to work shearing and shaving the plant material around their communities and office parks. We at ILT would like to ask you to consider supporting the movement to reverse that trend. In case you were wondering what that movement is all about, read on…
For many years now, we have been advocates of the anti-shearing movement, recommending to our customers that it is in their best interest, and ultimately in the best interest of their plant material, for our crews to leave the power shears in the truck and opt for the use of the hand pruners. Tree topping and unsustainable shrub shearing is, for the most part, ruining commercial landscapes and this practice needs to be replaced predominantly by natural selective pruning programs.

Shearingis the all too common landscape maintenance practiceof non-selectivepruning that forms plants into shapes that differ from theirnatural growth habit. Unsustainable shearing, i.e. the shaping of trees and shrubs into the endless balls and boxes that are seen on most commercial and many private landscapes, is resulting in less attractive landscapes, unhealthy growing environments, and expensive replacement costs for plants that cannot live out their normal life span.

Shearing creates a twiggy outer shell that gets ever denser and collects more deadwood and dead leaves every year, causing the condition commonly referred to as witches’ broom. These clusters of witches’ brooms create the perfect protected place for pests and diseases to flourish and they detract from the health and longevity of the plant. The weakened plants now require more water, nutrients, and pesticides just to survive, driving up irrigation and material costs. Eventually, as the plants succumb to this unsustainable shearing, more and more dead wood becomes exposed, detracting from their natural beauty. Ultimately, the plants either die prematurely, or get so bad that they cannot be saved and need to be replaced well before their normal life span.
Shearing also encourages water sprout regrowth; those straight-up, skinny, rapidly growing shoots that are a nuisance, breaking the natural architecture of the plant with weak unproductive growth. Water sprouts need to be cut off or re-sheared frequently to keep the plant looking neat. But shearing those off just creates more sprouts, locking the plant into a high maintenance routine. While many people like the look of a tightly sheared plant, the reality is that the sheared plants only look good for a short while before they need to be sheared again; promoting this unsustainable cycle.
Selective pruning, on theotherhand, promotes the health and natural shapeof a plant, saves money byreducing overall maintenance, and extends the life span of the landscape. Selective pruning techniques open up the center of the plant, with precise targeted cuts, allowing air and light penetration to create a stronger, healthier growing environment.  In addition to being bad for the plants, shearing of non-hedgeplants is counter-productive,resulting in higherlaborcosts since shearingrequires multipleoccurrences every season. Although selective pruning is much more labor intensive, selectively pruned plants need to be pruned only once every one to five years; so, in the long run, selective pruning practices will save on labor.
For the selective pruning movement to catch on, we need to address this common misconception that many people have that a plant needs to be sheared tightly to make it look like it is being well maintained. Under most circumstances, shearing actually subverts a tree or a shrub’s natural beauty.Every plant in a professionally designed landscape has been chosen because it adds something special to the overall design. It may have nice flowers, interesting texture, or artistic branch structure. Whatever the feature may be, it should be accentuated with pruning, not destroyed by shearing. A landscape designer’s skill is in creating a natural but interesting, seasonally changing, and aesthetically pleasing picture. Untimely shearing done by untrained contractors destroys that picture, making everything look the same-smooth and round, square and boxy, etc. Shearing continually chops away the new, fresh growth leaving old decaying or dead wood in its place. Additionally, this frequent, undisciplined shearing will often remove flowerbuds that are ready to bloom or those hardening off to provide next season’s color display.
Admittedly, some designers do get carried away with their own desire to be unique or unduly creative, calling for incompatible plant varieties to be placed in areas where they are doomed to be sheared back constantly (under windows, along sidewalks, against foundations, etc.). Then after the designer is long gone, the landscape crews are held responsible for maintaining the un-maintainable. In places where plants have been placed in unsustainable spots in the landscape, they should be systematically removed and replaced with more suitable varieties whose natural growth patterns are better suited to the space. Formal shearing should be reserved for “pruning art” like topiary or formal hedges, and only with plant varieties that are selected because of their ability to withstand frequent shearing.
As a customer, you must understand that most contractors are happy to accommodate your request to tightly shear everything on the property. Maintenance is a business, and most lower priced contractors will be happy to grab the shears and power through all of the pruning needs to be able to move rapidly on to the next task or their next property. Quick shearing fits nicely into a profitable regimen and helps them keep their prices low. However, what they don’t tell you, because they probably don’t know, is that selective and rejuvenative pruning, done properly either in-season or over the winter months, can all but eliminate any need for frequent shearing. That reduction of labor can often lead to saving you money or allowing for even more time on your property for other maintenance operations.
Almost anybody can shear plants without training, but selective pruning is more complex.  Crews require training to understand how this kind of pruning is done. Trained and experienced crews know what to do with each variety of plant in terms of the timing and execution of pruning operations. That type of knowledge is what separates the professional landscaper from the landscape laborer. A laborer simply does what he/she is told; a professional knows what to do. Those professionals get paid better wages so consequently the companies that employ those professionals need to charge a little more. As the saying goes, “you get what you pay for”.
If your doctor were to tell you to stop eating spicy foods to help ease the stomach pain that brought you to his office, would you tell the doctor to go ahead and remove your gall bladder anyway because that is what you think should be done. Probably not. You take the doctors professional advice because that is what you are paying for; and so it is with the professional contractor you hire to manage your landscape. If your preconceived expectations do not align with the sound horticulture practices your contractor is recommending, take a moment to reconsider and allow the professionals to provide the service for which you are paying. As a property manager or building owner, paying a little more for professional service will result in long term cost savings on premature replacements and unnecessary maintenance, and provide you with a more appealing marketable property.
In order for the anti-shearing movement in the landscape maintenance industry to get the necessary traction to affect real change, customers and contractors alike must adopt selective pruning as the new normal.  Landscape business owners must buy into the need to train crews in selective pruning techniques and wean them off the shearing default. Property managers and building owners must adjust their expectations, embrace the natural growth habits of the plants in their landscapes, and take the final step to demand selective pruning be done on your properties.

The purpose of this piece is to promote the demand for better pruning by getting the information out to you, the professional property manager or building owner. Reconsider your expectations. Tour your properties. Examine your landscaping. Talk to your contractors. Specify selective pruning to be done on all of your new plantings; urge your contractors to rehabilitate the previously over sheared plants where possible or replace them where necessary. If you demand that your contractors leave the power shears in the truck, over time, your landscapes will be transformed into the lush, healthy, low-maintenance, natural looking gardens that nature intended.

– Kevin Block

Memories of rain and trains

This morning one of my two favorite moments happened simultaneously…laying in bed while it is still dark out listening to the rain and hearing the distant sound of a train’s horn.  It might seem like a simple thing, but simple things can transport us back to simpler times.

The sound of a train blowing it’s horn in the early moments before daybreak bring me back to time spent at my mother’s family farm in Indiana.  It conjures a picture in my mind of crisp red and white, an apple orchard, and my grandfather sitting alone in the kitchen before dawn with a cup of coffee, his profile illuminated by the small light on the kitchenstove.

My family is very proud of our small farm and their father, mother, brothers and sisters, who worked so hard to provide the necessities.  You see, they were tied to the land.  Growing to feed their families.  They were prey to the same things we are prey to in our business…the weather, pests, disease, and ah yes…little critters.

I remember my grandfather had a book that outlined how and what he would plant each year, and how he intended to rotate those crops annually to get a better yield.  Thinking back I wished I had had more interest, asked more questions.  Maybe he had some secrets I could have used, not scientific research like we have abound today, but something he knew in his gut.

I was fortunate to have both sets of grandparents come from a place and time that held enormous respect for the land’s ability to provide beauty and sustenance.  They only bought what they could not grow and they worked painstakingly hard for what they had to buy.

When my husband and I started a family, one of the first things we did was create a vegetable garden.  I would constantly seek my mother and my grandmother’s advice.  I would create a book, like my grandfather and make certain to rotate my crops.  I made certain it was pretty as well.  We also battled bunnies, pests, weather and disease.  Although that garden fills me with immense satisfaction, joy and pride, it pales in comparison to the gardens of both of my grandparents and my mother’s.

But I do it, not just because it makes me think of my family, but because it reminds me and teaches my daughter…or as my mother says, “the land will always provide.”

Donna Vignocchi Zych

vegetable gardening

Donna’s Garden